Helpful or intrusive? No easy answers in student survey debate

How many Minnesota teenagers drink alcohol? Are sexually active? Use indoor tanning beds? How many feel safe at school?

For more than 20 years, policymakers, program administrators, school districts and researchers have relied on the Minnesota Student Survey for answers to these and myriad other questions. Most school districts offer the survey every three years to students in grade 5, 8, 9 and 11. The results have been used to plan and evaluate programs and policies in individual school districts and across the state to improve student health and safety.

“It’s really our only way to get information directly from kids about what their lives are like,” said Sheila Oehrlein, supervisor of the Education Department’s Safe and Healthy Learners team, which partners with the Departments of Health, Human Services and Public Safety to administer the survey. “We ask questions about risk behaviors to get a sense for [whether] we have the right system of supports out there.”

The survey has a wider reach and a longer history than any comparable survey, she said, and it has always been voluntary and anonymous, which helps ensure honest responses. Students don’t have to answer any question they don’t want to, and parents can opt their students out of taking the survey entirely.   

Rep. Eric Lucero

Still, some parents – and the legislators who represent them – find the detailed questions too invasive and think being able to opt out isn’t a strong enough privacy protection.

“Many of the complaints I’m receiving from parents, they’re about the intrusiveness, the non-academic content of these [surveys],” said Rep. Eric Lucero (R-Dayton), who has introduced several student data privacy bills this session. “It doesn’t matter if they’re Republican parents or Democrat parents; parents don’t want their children used in this manner.”

Legislation has been unsuccessfully introduced in the past to require explicit parental consent for students to take the survey, and this year’s proposal goes a step further. The omnibus education bill passed by the House last week – HF2749, sponsored by Rep. Jim Knoblach (R-St. Cloud) – includes a provision that would prohibit the Education Department from conducting any statewide survey that asks students about topics such as substance abuse, sexual activities and other behaviors.

Student privacy concerns

Even though Minnesota Student Survey responses are anonymous, the questions might introduce new topics to students without the proper context, Lucero said. For example, a fifth grader asked about running away from home may never have considered the possibility before, he said.

“There’s no context here, it doesn’t speak about whether it’s a good behavior or a bad behavior,” Lucero said. “Parents want more authority and ability to control and put some value statements around topics that children are being introduced to.”

The content of student surveys is “just the tip of the iceberg” of student data privacy concerns, Lucero said, and he hopes that interim work by the Legislative Commission on Data Practices will result in a strong bipartisan bill that tackles broader issues of student data security and access.

While data privacy issues have generally attracted wide bipartisan support, many DFLers have defended the importance of the Minnesota Student Survey in committee and on the House Floor this session.

Rep. JoAnn Ward (DFL-Woodbury) unsuccessfully offered a floor amendment to remove the survey restriction from the omnibus education bill. Her “tan-free teens” law enacted in 2014, which prohibits children under age 18 from using tanning equipment, was based on a correlation between tanning bed use and increased skin cancer rates among teens. The American Cancer Society used data from the Minnesota Student Survey to identify this correlation, she said when introducing the amendment.

Rep. Yvonne Selcer (DFL-Minnetonka) has repeatedly cited her experience as a school board member in which her district used the survey to identify alcohol use by students, designed interventions to try to curb it, and then saw in the subsequent survey that drinking rates had decreased.

A question about the questions

Last year marked the first time efforts to restrict student surveys had official bipartisan support, when Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul) signed on as a co-sponsor to HF99, sponsored by Rep. Peggy Scott (R-Andover), to require parents to opt their children into the survey.

Lesch still considers himself an outlier among Democrats in supporting restrictions on student surveys. But 50 or 60 years ago, it would have been liberals pushing for such restrictions, he said, and he is concerned about “a political shift based on some perceived threat.” For example, he wonders, what would happen if the majority of Minnesotans think collecting data on religion is acceptable as a counterterrorism strategy? No matter how many data protections are put in place, what would happen if there were a breach of privacy?

“When we make policy, we have to do it on the long-term interests of citizens, not the short-term,” he said. “They make the pitch, ‘Trust us, we’re doing good stuff for your kids.’ To me, that’s not the point.”

Survey designers are responsive to concerns and committed to asking the right kinds of questions, Oehrlein said. As the 2016 survey administration wraps up, administrators are planning focus groups and conversations that include both supporters and critics of the survey to figure out how the survey can be improved and how the results can best be shared with districts and others.

The department has heard some complaints about the survey, she said, but “We also hear from a lot of schools and parents who are grateful we are asking these kids of questions.” 

And while the survey has been used to identify increases in health and safety risks among teens, it has also identified some good news over the years: “Kids in Minnesota are doing pretty well,” Oehrlein said.